


Baker's Dozens and Other Omens of Misfortune

by overdressedcarp



Category: Milo Murphy's Law
Genre: Friendship, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 20:16:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12417366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overdressedcarp/pseuds/overdressedcarp
Summary: 21st-century kitchen appliances are intolerably complicated. Baking is plebian and old-fashioned to begin with. Shampoo bottle labels are deceptive. At any rate, none of this is Cavendish’s fault.





	Baker's Dozens and Other Omens of Misfortune

**Author's Note:**

> Set somewhere between "Missing Milo" and "Perchance to Sleepwalk."

“Oh— _fiddlesticks_.”

Cavendish dropped the baking sheet onto the counter, grumbling under his breath as he fanned his painfully-pink hand. Today would be the day for their towel-slash-potholder to be in the laundry.

He snatched a fork from the dish drainer with his uninjured hand and poked at one of the smoldering eyesores petrified to the baking sheet. It refused to budge.

“Scarred by your thwarted ambitions toward edibility,” he muttered. “I understand.”

This was what he got for trying to be considerate. A kind gesture, out of the goodness of his heart—yes, technically this was meant to make up for the shampoo incident, but guilt didn’t automatically invalidate kindness!—but of course his own personal life curse couldn’t even let him properly apologize for misreading the hair-care labels at the supermarket.

“You’ve gotta have some Murphy blood in you somewhere,” Dakota had said after last month’s situation involving the hotel sprinkler system. Cavendish was almost starting to believe him.

The door to the apartment rattled, then slammed. Dakota’s voice filtered into the kitchen: “Hey, Cav, did you set something on fire again? It smells like smoke in here.”

Cavendish pressed his palms against his forehead and fought down a scream.

#

“It wasn’t my fault! The timer didn’t set properly and I was filling out mission reports at the same time and I didn’t have my —”

“Cavendish.” Dakota placed his hands on Cavendish’s elbows. “Look at me. Is anything on fire?”

“Er. No.”

“Is anyone mortally injured?”

Cavendish tucked his still-pink hand behind his back. “Not, strictly speaking, mortally —”

“Did you manage to destabilize the time stream during the half-hour I was gone?”

“I have done nothing of the sort!”

“Then for the love of Tchaikovsky, would you cool it with the swan songs? I don’t need the Tragic and Guiltless Lament of Balthazar Cavendish in A Minor.” Dakota stepped around Cavendish, then reached across the stovetop and switched off the oven. “Why were you messing around in here, anyway? I thought we were gonna order takeout for dinner.”

“I had hoped that a gesture of friendship might finally encourage you to bury the metaphorical hacksaw.”

“It’s a hatchet. The expression is ‘bury the hatchet.’”

“This is exactly what I’m talking about! I am _trying_ , for antiquity’s sake!”

“Fine, fine. Don’t have a fit. Which hacksaw are we talking about, specifically? Because I feel like we’ve got a whole tool shed at this point.”

Cavendish glared at the kitchen tiles. “I apologize for inconveniencing your personal hygiene regimen. I had no intentions of implying anything derogatory about your hair, dandruff-related or otherwise.”

Dakota raised his eyebrows, then burst out laughing. “And this—this is your idea of restitution? You bought the wrong shampoo and decided to try _baking_ as an apology?”

“I know that you’re partial to food.”

“I’m partial to good food, Cav.”

Cavendish rolled his eyes. “You bruise my heart.”

“What do you want me to say? That I’m flattered? That it’s the thought that counts?”

“Perhaps!”

“Okay, whatever. Consider yourself absolved.” Dakota leaned over the counter and squinted at the baking sheet. “Um. What were you trying to make?”

“Ah—I was... er...” Cavendish wrinkled his nose. “You know, _biscuits_ —you don’t call them biscuits, though, it’s—those dratted snackish things; you practically never see them anymore outside of documentaries —”

“Cookies?”

“Yes! That! Those!”

“Oh.” Dakota studied the baking sheet. “They, uh. They look crispy.”

“They’re burnt. And fully inedible. I’m not seven; you needn’t sugarcoat things on my account.”

Dakota tipped his head to the side. “Yeah, I don’t think sugar would help these.”

Cavendish scowled at the failed culinary exercise. “This is such an antiquated method of food preparation. I don’t know how people avoided starvation in this century.”

“Desperation is the mother of learning how to cook your own meals, I guess.” Dakota unzipped his jacket and tugged it off. “Where’s your recipe?”

Cavendish gestured to the beat-up laptop on the table. “I attempted to interrogate the internet.”

Dakota tapped the space bar on the laptop, then peered over the top of his sunglasses at the dim screen. “Yeesh, everything’s in imperial. How’d you even measure the ingredients?”

“I tried to convert the measurements to metric, but we’ve only got the one measuring cup, so I mostly shook things into the mixing bowl until the consistency seemed... tolerable.”

“Yeah, see, that might work for a Pollock painting, but cooking’s a little more finicky.” Dakota crouched down and opened their tiny fridge. “You didn’t clear us out, did you?”

“I believe I may have exhausted our supply of margarine.”

“No big deal. We’ll do a modified recipe.”

“I thought you said cooking was—finicky.”

“There’s a difference between changing the recipe because you don’t know what you’re doing, and changing the recipe because you’re out of margarine and can’t be bothered to go to the store.” Dakota handed Cavendish the mixing bowl. “Here, rinse this out. I’m gonna try to scrape Dessert 1.0 off the baking sheet.”

“I appreciate the thought, but this really isn’t necessary.”

“Who said anything about necessary? I want cookies. Might as well give you a crash course in home economics while we’re at it.”

#

Cavendish folded his arms over his chest. “I have some concerns about your methodology.”

“Look, I am ninety-nine percent sure this is how my mom used to make them.”

“And I am ninety-nine percent sure that you were supposed to remove the shells before adding the eggs.”

“Oh. Whoops.”

#

Dessert 2.0 never made it into the oven. They decided not to speak of it again.

#

The grocery store cashier gawked at Cavendish. “Um, sir? Your —”

“Not relevant,” said Dakota, sliding the package of break-and-bake cookies down the scanner belt. “Just ring us out. Thanks.”

“But —” The cashier glanced back and forth between Dakota and Cavendish, then leaned in to address Dakota in a low whisper. “His _moustache_ —”

“We’re aware of the moustache situation.” Dakota fished in his pocket and pulled out a wad of dollar bills. “It’s been a rough day. Ring us out.”

“Oh. Uh...” The cashier slid the package of cookies over the scanner, then tucked the bills into the cash register drawer and fished out the change. “Paper or... plastic...?”

“What do you think, Cav? Was last week’s nuclear reactor incident enough environmental damage for one month, or should we continue our pattern of gross neglect for this century’s health?”

Cavendish sniffed, then rubbed at the burnt left side of his moustache. “I told you; that wasn’t my fault.”

“Did I say it was your fault? I never said it was your fault.” Dakota turned to the cashier. “Did I say it was his fault?”

“Um—no —”

“See?” Dakota slid the change into his pocket, then snatched the package of cookies and tucked it under his elbow. “I never said it was your fault. I said the situation was a bad bucket of bears, and that Savannah and Brick would probably loathe you until eternity. But I didn’t say it was your fault.”

Cavendish cleared his throat. Adjusted his vest. “Good to know we’ve clarified your feelings about that particular episode.”

#

“These come with chocolate included, you know,” Cavendish said. “It says so on the package.”

Dakota ripped open the bag of chocolate chips—procured from their unspoken stash of junk food on the top shelf of the pantry—and poured them into a bowl. “You will thank me for this later. I promise.”

“You don’t find this a bit... excessive?”

“Oh, absolutely. It’s ridiculously excessive. That’s the point.”

“Ah.” Cavendish plucked one of the chocolate chips from the bowl and popped it into his mouth. “I think I might still have some of the candy-coated chocolate pieces in my desk drawer if you’re looking to be truly horrific.”

Dakota grinned. “Now we’re talking.”

#

“We can’t let down our guard. This is where Dessert 1.0 crashed and burned.” Dakota closed the oven door and brushed his palms on his track pants. “Heh. Burned. Get it? Because you nearly set the kitchen on —”

“ _I get it_.”

“Anyway. We need to watch this one carefully. Even a slight miscalculation could doom us.”

“You’re taking this very seriously.”

“I’m hungry! Dessert 3.0 is our last shot; I’m not starting from scratch again.”

“This batch isn’t, technically speaking, from scratch —”

“Figure of speech, Cavendish!”

#

They crouched in front of the oven and stared through the grease-crusted glass pane on the door. The break-and-bake cookies, heaped with every scrap of chocolate they had in the apartment, sat on the other side of the door.

They waited.

“Are you sure you set the timer?”

“Yes, I set the timer.”

They waited.

“Are you _sure_ —”

“You watched me set it!”

#

They waited.

The timer beeped.

“I got it!”

“ _I’ll_ get it!”

They both leapt to their feet, scrambling around the cramped kitchen and generally doing an excellent job of running into each other.

“Where’s the potholder towel?”

“It’s in the laundry!”

“What do you mean, it’s in the laundry? How did you get the first batch out?”

“I burned my hand on the baking sheet!”

“Oh, for crying out loud —” Dakota glanced around the room, then grabbed his jacket from the kitchen chair and yanked the oven door open. Using the jacket as an ersatz oven mitt, he seized the baking sheet and hefted it out of the oven.

#

The jacket now bore a set of prominent scorch marks. Dakota complained about this for almost ten minutes while they wiped down the kitchen counters and washed the dishes.

“Since you’ve suffered so much,” Cavendish said, “I suppose you ought to be the first to taste the products of our labor.” He didn’t mention that his burnt moustache was, objectively, a greater testament to culinary suffering than the besmirching of any article of clothing.

Dakota plucked a cookie from the sheet, wincing as he did so—“Hot, _hot_ ”—then took a bite. And another.

“Well? How is it?”

In response, Dakota chewed in silence for three full minutes, He worked his way through five of the cookies before finally licking his lips and confirming, verbally, that this batch had turned out okay.

“At this rate,” Cavendish said, “you’re not going to have room for dinner.”

“Cavendish. The number-one rule of baking is that when you have warm chocolate-chip cookies fresh out of the oven, the time of day is irrelevant; you eat the cookies.”

Cavendish plucked one of the cookies from the cooling rack and nibbled the edge. “I’d hate to violate a sacramental kitchen maxim.”

“Exactly.”

Cavendish tried to ignore the further mess he was making of his charred moustache. The unholy amount of chocolate, he decided, was worth it. “These aren’t bad, actually.”

Dakota leaned against the counter and took another bite of cookie. “No. No they are not.”


End file.
